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Tuesday, October 12, 2004

the idea

right... this is the idea.I was thinking about the "your own discipline" thing, and started thinking about the "transfer of techniques" and the "material qualities of your own field" bits of the brief.Still trying to form the idea around games I realised that in the game Im playing the most (Star Wars Galaxies) one of the main professions you can do is crafting. In this you have to find rescources and put them together to create useful items within the game (like clothes, armour weapons, camps, etc.). I started to think about how you get the rescources to craft with... you can source them yourself, tarde with others, or buy with others. I realised its a very similar process to trading cards.however in Galaxies your trading more useful things than cards, you trading the ability to create useful items in the game. I thought about cards like pokemon where 1 card will be more powerful than another. Just as in galaxies where some rescources are of a better quality than others (the maximum being 1000). Also some rescources (like cards) are rare. this is good i thought to myself lots of game thinking, these are the processes contained within the game (the techniques) and in a very literal way in Galaxies the quality of your materials is extremely important. I then thought of the game you play as a kid when your bored where one person draws a head, the next person draws a torso down to the belly button, the next person draws to the knees, then the next draws the rest.Similarities abound, (and bearing in mind my want to create characters) the idea is this...v.small parts (ceramic, nice looking), character creating parts, heads torsos etc.made for a more adult market (just like galaxies, and all role playing games)fit them together to make complete characters... trade, buy, to create the actual fitting characters. some rare... perhaps the Galaxies animals? each like pokemon (and indeed galaxies) would have a certain degree of power, stronger and weaker than others.etc.etc. thats the idea... its about creating shapes that have universal connectors, shapes that can be rapidly prototyped, in a game trady way.the end... now off to think some more.